zlacker

Why in your opinion is the lab leak so low in probability?

>>neonol+(OP)
Primarily Occam's razor. The total area available to coronaviruses in the wild to replicate and mutate in is orders of magnitude greater than the area available in a laboratory.

>>neonol+(OP)
This is already answered in GP comment: a career in biology would suffer if biological research were to become more suspect to the general population, with a corresponding loss of prestige.

>>unansw+V1
That's my opinion?

>>COGlor+R1
But weren't they doing that exact thing in the Wuhan laboratory -- making coronaviruses infect humanized cells(with the ACE2 receptor)?

Wouldn't the fact that it started in Wuhan point the razor in the direction of lab-escape theory?

>>raducu+8g
It tilts the needle, yes, but there are numerous other pieces of evidence that tilt it in the other direction. Hence the 90%/10% split in my mind. But I won't fault anyone else for having a different split. I think that's reasonable.

>>COGlor+R1
I am not an expert in the field, but I don’t find this math convincing - I arrive at the opposite conclusion. This was not a random lab and the outbreak didn’t just start anywhere.